News:

"There is a terrible desperation to the increasingly pathetic rationalizations from the climate denial camp. This comes as no surprise if you take the long view; every single undone paradigm in history has died kicking and screaming, and our current petroleum paradigm 🐉🦕🦖 is no different. The trick here is trying to figure out how we all make it to the new ⚡ paradigm without dying ☠️ right along with the old one, kicking, screaming or otherwise." - William Rivers Pitt

U.S. missileers are required to adhere to all nuclear security and safety regulations at all times because even small missteps have the potential to lead to catastrophe. Despite this, U.S. Air Force officers responsible for launching land-based nuclear missiles twice violated security policy by leaving blast doors open while napping. Officials with personal knowledge of the incidents say that similar transgressions have likely taken place and not been discovered.

The Air Force released a statement assuring that security of the ICBMs was not at risk following either incident "due to the multiple safeguards and the protections in place." Two launch crew commanders and two deputies received administrative punishment for the breaches.

Only the latest in a string of embarrassments for the U.S. land-based missile crews, the thawing of the Cold War has apparently also thawed the rigid adherence to all nuclear safety and security rules.

Navy Vice Admiral Tim Giardina was relieved of duty on October 3 over allegations that he used counterfeit gambling chips at a casino in Iowa. Giardina was the second-in-command at U.S. Strategic Command, which commands all U.S. nuclear forces.

Giardina's dismissal follows the removal of two other high-profile nuclear weapon commanders in 2013. In August, Col. David Lynch was relieved of duty at Malmstrom Air Force Base. Earlier this year, Lt. Col. Randy Olson was relieved of duty at Minot Air Force Base.

Panadora's NUCLEAR box (Not to be confused with the mendacious pro-nuclear documentary propaganda pitch for more nukes called, "Pandora's Promise")

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Pandora's Atomic Box Score: On the Nuclear Industry's Total Meltdown

Published on Monday, November 11, 2013 by Common Dreams

by Harvey Wasserman

The first prophetic sign to follow CNN's irrelevant Pandora's Promise is this: the Dallas-based Luminant Power Company has cancelled two mammoth reactors.

Pandora's box score for atomic America 2013 is five announced early reactor closures, nine project cancellations and six ditched uprates. Today, 100 U.S. reactors operate where 1,000 were once promised. New orders are zilch.

Even more critical: For decades the nuclear industry said zero commercial reactors could explode. When Chernobyl blew, they blamed it on the Soviet design. Now, three General Electric reactors have exploded at Fukushima. Unfortunately, as they age and deteriorate, there may be more to come.

"Atomic energy makes global warming worse. Its truest promise is for ever more meltdowns—in health, the ecology and economy."

Here are some more numbers to tally. More than 1,300 fuel rods sit in a damaged fuel pool 100 feet in the air at Fukushima 4. They contain radioactive cesium equivalent to 14,000 times what was released at the bombing of Hiroshima. There are some 6,000 rods in a common fuel pool nearby. There are some 11,000 rods scattered around the site. The three melted cores from units One, Two and Three are missing. There are roughly 1,000 tanks holding billions of gallons of hot radioactive water that are leaking and will collapse in the next big earthquake.

All 50 allegedly operable reactors in Japan remain shut. Germany is on its way to total green power.

WHAT IF conscience free, predatory capitalist ONE PERCENTERS could Convince Americans to Act AGAINST Their RENEWABLE ENERGY and HEALTH BEST INTERESTS ON BEHALF OF NUCLEAR Power plant PROFITS and POISON With a Misleading, Mendacious and Fact Free Symbolic Image of a Nice Clean BOX/CUBE Containing "UNLIMITED" energy ?Agelbert NOTE: Click below for further info about how images prior to articles are used to convince you that a statement is true (regardless of whether it is true or not! )How Does a Photo Influence Perceived Veracity of a Statement?

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As it aired on CNN, a grassroots coalition presented more than 150,000 signatures to the United Nations, requesting a global takeover at the accursed Fukushima, where three reactors cores are missing and radiation still pours into the ocean.

"More tests" were needed, they said. This week the U.S. Department of Energy will meet on how to aid an untried engineering exercise whose failure doom the planet. But if it can be done at all, it will take the entire global community to bring this beast under control.

CNN dumped a ton of hype on Pandora's Promise, and made no real attempt to hide its own pro-nuke bias. Lead-up debates were heavily weighted toward the industry, whose push for a new generation of reactors will ultimately go nowhere.

The scenario is obvious: Gates and his fellow mega-rich will pour into various theoretical atomic technologies a few hundred million dollars. They'll write it all off their taxes. They'll demand immunity for any accidents. It'll all run billions over budget and years behind schedule.[Then they'll leave yet another radioactive mess for the rest of us to clean up.

Atomic energy makes global warming worse. Its truest promise is for ever more meltdowns—in health, the ecology and economy.

This movie maker needs to revisit Fukushima and report on those fuel rods flying in the sky, the river of radiation pouring into the oceans and the lethal long-lived poisons spewing into the air we breathe. As Hesiod says, when the original Pandora opened her forbidden box, "the Earth and sea were full of evils."

But hope did remain, now in the form of the green power revolution. The world of finance is on our side. So is the insurance industry. And, basic sanity.

On the 11th of every month, in commemoration of Fukushima, many of us will fast in solidarity with the victims in hope of a survivable outcome. You can help by signing our petitions. With our grassroots organizing and escalated resistance, a Solartopian world can be won.

Pandora's clear promise-call it a warning-is that our survival depends on it.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Harvey Wasserman's Solartopia Green Power & Wellness Show is at www.progressiveradionetwork.com, and he edits www.nukefree.org. Harvey Wasserman's History of the US and Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth are at www.harveywasserman.com along with Passions of the PotSmoking Patriots by "Thomas Paine." He and Bob Fitrakis have co-authored four books on election protection, including How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election, at www.freepress.org.

In a statement on C-Span, Republican congressman Duncan Hunter of California said that if the U.S. had to hit Iran, "you don’t do it with boots on the ground, you do it with tactical nuclear devices." This remark goes a step further than those made by GOP donor Sheldon Adelson in October, who said that a nuclear device should be detonated in the desert of Iran to send a warning. Hunter said that his opinion is formed by his own service spent in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hunter’s statement had no lack of opponents. Kingston Reif of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation responded, "The first use of nuclear weapons against Iran would guarantee a mad Iranian dash to acquire nuclear weapons to deter future such US attacks."

Ben Armbruster, "Congressman Says U.S. Should Use Nuclear Weapons if it Attacks Iran," ThinkProgress, December 4, 2013.

300+ Groups Urge Climate Scientist Dr. Hansen to Rethink Support of Nuclear Power

Civil Society Institute | January 9, 2014 9:43 am

A total of 311 U.S. and international environmental and clean energy groups said yesterday that, while they respect the climate change work of Dr. James Hansen and three of his academic colleagues, they take strong exception to the notion that nuclear power is the solution to global warming.

Instead of embracing nuclear power, we request that you join us in supporting an electric grid dominated by energy efficiency, renewable, distributed power and storage technologies.Instead of embracing nuclear power, we request that you join us in supporting an electric grid dominated by energy efficiency, renewable, distributed power and storage technologies.

The joint letter from more than 300 groups—including 237 from 46 U.S. states and the District of Columbia and 74 from 44 other nations around the globe, including those on the ground dealing with the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster—is being issued in response to a Nov. 3, 2013 statement from Dr. James Hansen and three of his academic colleagues, Ken Caldeira, Kerry Emanuel and Tom Wigley. In that statement Hansen and the others voiced their advocacy for nuclear power, an industry plagued by financial, technical and safety issues for more than 50 years.

In yesterday’s statement organized by the Civil Society Institute (CSI) and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), 311 organizations are urging Dr. Hansen and his colleagues to publicly debate the question of climate change and nuclear power.The statement reads in part:

Instead of embracing nuclear power, we request that you join us in supporting an electric grid dominated by energy efficiency, renewable, distributed power and storage technologies. We ask you to join us in supporting the phase-out of nuclear power as Germany and other countries are pursuing. It is simply not feasible for nuclear power to be a part of a sustainable, safe and affordable future for humankind. We would be pleased to meet with you directly to further discuss these issues, to bring the relevant research on renewable energy and grid integration to a dialog with you. Again, we thank you for your service and contribution to our country’s understanding about climate change.

The full text of yesterday’s statement is available online.“We can admire the important work of Dr. Hansen on climate change, which is his area of expertise, while disagreeing with his advocacy of nuclear power,” said CSI Senior Energy Analyst Grant Smith. “In the face of a clear need for swift action on climate change, there is nothing about nuclear power that resembles a solution that can be put into place quickly, much less in a safe and affordable fashion.

“Indeed, Dr. Hansen and his colleagues tout so-called ‘advanced’ nuclear technology, which is nothing more than regurgitated attempts by the industry to bring tried-and-failed alternative designs such as expensive and dangerous breeder reactors to commercialization. We have clean, affordable, safe, reliable and proven solutions available to us. These safe and clean sources can be brought to scale creating an electric grid that relies much more heavily on increased energy efficiency, variable wind and solar photovoltaic (PV), distributed power, demand response and storage technologies. This energy path can reduce greenhouse gas emissions much more quickly, cost-effectively and safely than any nuclear option. The markets are responding and there is clear evidence that they are catalyzing an unprecedented technological revolution in the power sector.”

“What we are saying is that Dr. Hansen has things exactly half right: We need to take action now to mitigate climate change,” said NIRS President Michael Mariotte. “Where we are taking issue is with the other half: the mistaken idea that nuclear power is some kind of panacea for all that ails our climate. In fact, nuclear power is the slowest, most expensive, and most dangerous climate ‘solution’ available. Our sincere hope is that Dr. Hansen will heed the input of literally hundreds of knowledgeable energy and environmental groups around the world. The joint letter puts it best with these words: ‘It is simply not feasible for nuclear power to be a part of a sustainable, safe and affordable future for humankind.’”

The Jan. 8 statement from the more than 300 signers reads in part:

Nuclear power is not a financially viable option. Since its inception it has required taxpayer subsidies and publicly financed indemnity against accidents. New construction requires billions in public subsidies to attract private capital and, once under construction, severe cost overruns are all but inevitable. As for operational safety, the history of nuclear power plants in the U.S. is fraught with near misses, as documented by the Union of Concerned Scientists, and creates another financial and safety quagmire—high-level nuclear waste. Internationally, we’ve experienced two catastrophic accidents for a technology deemed to be virtually ‘fail safe’.

As for ‘advanced’ nuclear designs endorsed in your letter, they have been tried and failed or are mere blueprints without realistic hope, in the near term, if ever, to be commercialized. The promise and potential impact you lend breeder reactor technology in your letter is misplaced. Globally, $100 billion over sixty years have been squandered to bring the technology to commercialization without success. The liquid sodium-based cooling system is highly dangerous as proven in Japan and the U.S. And the technology has proven to be highly unreliable.

Equally detrimental in cost and environmental impact is reprocessing of nuclear waste. In France, the poster child for nuclear energy, reprocessing results in a marginal increase in energetic use of uranium while largely increasing the volume of all levels of radioactive waste. Indeed, the process generates large volumes of radioactive liquid waste annually that is dumped into the English Channel and has increased electric costs to consumers significantly. Not to mention the well-recognized proliferation risks of adopting a plutonium-based energy system.

As to the issue of what represents the best path forward to deal with climate change, the Jan. 8 statement notes:

We disagree with your assessment of renewable power and energy efficiency. They can and are being brought to scale globally. Moreover, they can be deployed much more quickly than nuclear power. For instance, in the U.S. from 2002 to 2012 over 50,000 megawatts of wind were deployed. Not one megawatt of power from new nuclear reactors was deployed, despite subsidies estimated to be worth more than the value of the power new reactors would have produced. Similarly, it took 40 years globally to deploy 50,000 megawatts of solar PV and, recently, only two and a half years to deploy an equal amount. By some estimates, another 100,000 MW will be built by the end of 2015. Already, renewables and distributed power have overtaken nuclear power in terms of megawatt hour generation worldwide.

The fact of the matter is, many Wall Street analysts predict that solar PV and wind will have reached grid parity by the end of the decade. Wind in certain parts of the Midwest is already cheaper than natural gas on the wholesale level. Energy efficiency continues to outperform all technologies on a cost basis. While the cost of these technologies continues to decline and enjoy further technological advancement, the cost of nuclear power continues to increase and construction timeframes remain excessive. And we emphasize again that no technological breakthrough to reduce its costs or enhance its operation will occur in the foreseeable future.

The human body thinks Cesium-137 that it finds in food you eat is POTASSIUM. So if you NEED POTASSIUM at the time you eat that food, you will incorporate a future cancer into your tissues. If you do not need it, you MIGHT be able to excrete it before it becomes part of you. California is considering fertilizing large vegetable crop areas that are becoming increasingly contaminated with ce-137 with Potassium Cholride (KCl). The reason for this is that plants supposedly will take up the KCL instead of the ce-137. We'll see.

Over the long term, the big threat to human health is cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years.At that rate of disintegration, John Emsley wrote in “Nature’s Building Blocks” (Oxford, 2001), “it takes over 200 years to reduce it to 1 percent of its former level.”

It is cesium-137 that still contaminates much of the land in Ukraine around the Chernobyl reactor.

Cesium-137 mixes easily with water and is chemically similar to potassium. It thus mimics how potassium gets metabolized in the body and can enter through many foods, including milk.

The Environmental Protection Agency says that … once dispersed in the environment … cesium-137 “is impossible to avoid.”

Cesium-137 is light enough to be carried by the wind a substantial distance. And it is being carried by ocean currents towards the West Coast of North America.

Fortunately – while little-known in the medical community – other harmless minerals can help “saturate” our bodies so as to minimize the uptake of other harmful types of radiation.

The U.S. Department of Defense’s Army Medical Department Center and School explained in its book Medical Consequences of Radiological and Nuclear Weapons (Chapter 4):

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One of the keys to a successful treatment outcome is to reduce or eliminate the uptake of internalized radionuclides before they can reach the critical organ.

The terms “blocking” or “diluting” agent can, in most cases, be used interchangeably. These compounds reduce the uptake of a radionuclide by saturating binding sites with a stable, nonradioactive element, thereby diluting the deleterious effect of the radioisotope.

For example, potassium iodide is the FDA-recommended treatment to prevent radioactive iodine from being sequestered in the thyroid…. Nonradioactive strontium compounds may also be used to block the uptake of radioactive strontium.

In addition, elements with chemical properties similar to the internalized radio-nuclide are often used as blocking agents. For example, calcium, and to a lesser extent phosphorus, can be used to block uptake of radioactive strontium.

Agelbert NOTE: I don't trust the U.S. Army's DEFINITION of "successful" treatment against radiation. Do you?

I agree there ARE blocking agents and they CAN limit our exposure somewhat. We are Guinea pigs and will have to find out the hard way how much we can block these radioactive poisons. The USA was contaminated with Ce-137 during the above ground nuclear explosion period of several decades.

Deposition maps were made. They are OUT OF DATE as of Chernobyl, never mind Fukushima! We need new maps. Don't hold your breath waiting for out gooberment to have them made...

Counties in other states throughout the eastern half of the United States received substantial Cs-137 deposition. A larger number of states have counties that received substantial thyroid doses of radioactive iodine from NTS tests.

The CDC/NCI study included tests conducted between 1951 and 1962. This means that: Chinese tests were not included (1964 to 1980)

French atmospheric tests after 1962 were not included. Hence all French atmospheric tests in the Pacific were not included. (France conducted atmospheric tests from 1960 until 1974.)

The pre-1951 tests in the Marshall Islands and the Soviet Union, the 1945 New Mexico test, and the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were not included.

Ventings from underground tests in the United States or the Soviet Union were not included.

Calculations for Alaska and Hawaii have not been done. Alaska may have had quite a bit of fallout from Novaya Zemlya. Hawaii may have had fallout from the Marshall Islands tests. These two states need to be included in future work. They were not included because of the limitations of this feasibility stage of the study. These two states would involve different sets of data. Fallout would also be expected in other places, for instance Canada.This is ONE of several FALLOUT maps you can view at the link:Cesium-137 deposition density due to global fallout

Fallout Maps (provided to IEER by CDC in February 2002)

Locations of sites having greater than one megaton total tests conducted prior to 1963

Preliminary estimates of total radiation dose to red bone marrow of children born 1 January 1951

from Nevada Test Site and global fallout for all radionuclides

Total (external + internal) dose to red bone marrow of an adult from global fallout

Total (external + internal) dose to red bone marrow of an adult from Nevada Test Site tests

Cesium-137 deposition density due to global fallout

Cesium-137 deposition density due to Nevada Test Site tests

Notes:48 contiguous states only, based on cumulative exposures between 1951 and 2000, does not account for all nuclear tests as explained above ↩ ReturnEstimated by IEER by assuming a 5% mortality rate from thyroid cancer. ↩ ReturnRounded best estimate of 11,000-212,000 estimated range, obtained by taking geometric mean. ↩ ReturnFrom radionuclides such as carbon-14, tritium, cesium-137. Rounded to one or two significant figures as indicated.

Chronic Exposure or Carcinogenicity/ The toxicity of cesium-137 in the beagle dog was investigated... as part of programs to evaluate the biological effects of both radionuclides in atomic bomb fallout and internally deposited fission-product radionuclides. ...

63 dogs in three age groups (15 juveniles, 142-151 days old; 38 young adults, 388-427 days old; and 10 middle-aged dogs, 1387-2060 days old) were given cesium-137 intravenously at levels (61-162 MBq/kg) near those expected to be lethal within 30 days after injection. There were 17 control dogs from the same colony.

Twenty-three of the dogs injected with cesium-137, including all middle-aged dogs, died within 52 days after injection due to hematopoietic cell damage resulting in severe pancytopenia that led to fatal hemorrhage and/or septicemia. The other significant early effect was damage to the germinal epithelium of the seminiferous tubules of all male dogs. ...

The most significant non-neoplastic late effects in the cesium-137-injected dogs... were atrophy of the germinal epithelium of seminiferous tubules with azoospermia, and a significant dose-dependent decrease in survival. ...Numerous neoplasms occurred at many different sites in the dogs injected with cesium-137... .

Two differences in the findings of the two studies were that

(1) there was an increased risk for malignant thyroid neoplasms in /one group of/ ... male dogs injected with cesium-137, but not the... dogs /in the other study/ and

(2) there was an increased relative risk for benign neoplasms excluding mammary neoplasms in /one group of/... dogs injected with cesium-137, but not /in the other group/. ...In both groups, there were dose-related increased incidences of malignant neoplasms, malignant neoplasms excluding mammary neoplasms, all sarcomas considered as a group, all non-mammary carcinomas considered as a group and malignant liver neoplasms.

In summary, the similarity of the findings between the two studies and the dose-response relationships for survival and for large groupings of neoplasms suggests that these results are consistent findings in cesium-137-injected dogs and might be dose-related late effects in humans exposed to sufficient amounts of internally deposited cesium-137. /Cesium-137/[Nikula KJ et al; Radiat Res 146 (5): 536-47 (1996)] **PEER REVIEWED** PubMed Abstract

Agelbert NOTE: "MIGHT be dose-related in humans exposed" is SCIENTIST SPEAK for covering their asses about the TRUTH that humans are every bit as dose dependent as the dogs are.

We are going need a LOT of Ce-137 absorbing mushrooms if the KCL doesn't cut it.

The human body is 0.4% potassium. That may not seem like a lot but it is in every single cell we have, SO, if ce-137 sneaks in, it will destroy DNA all over the place.

Check out how IMPORTANT to our body POTASSIUM is and how the food that has it that we need will uptake ce-137 as easily as WE DO thinking it is Potassium! That means mutations in the food and in us out the YING YANG, get it?

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Potassium is a mineral that is needed for your body to work properly. It is a type of electrolyte.

Many foods contain potassium. All meats (red meat and chicken) and fish such as salmon, cod, flounder, and sardines are good sources of potassium. Soy products and veggie burgers are also good sources of potassium.

Vegetables including broccoli, peas, lima beans, tomatoes, potatoes (especially their skins), sweet potatoes, and winter squashes are all good sources of potassium.

Milk and yogurt, as well as nuts, are also excellent sources of potassium.

People with kidney problems, especially those on dialysis, should not eat too many potassium-rich foods. The doctor or nurse will recommend a special diet.

Side Effects

Having too much or too little potassium in the body can have very serious consequences.

A low blood level of potassium is called hypokalemia. It can cause weak muscles, abnormal heart rhythms, and a slight rise in blood pressure. You may have hypokalemia if you:•Take diuretics (water pills) for the treatment of high blood pressure or heart failure•Take too many laxatives•Have severe or prolonged vomiting and diarrhea•Have certain kidney or adrenal gland disorders

Too much potassium in the blood is known as hyperkalemia. It may cause abnormal and dangerous heart rhythms. Some common causes include:•Poor kidney function•Heart medicines called angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and angiotensin 2 receptor blockers (ARBs)•Potassium-sparing diuretics (water pills) such as spironolactone or amiloride•Severe infection

Recommendations

The Food and Nutrition Center of the Institute of Medicine has established the following recommended dietary intakes for potassium:

Thanks Surly,The Geiger counter will expose the heavy contamination but the becquerel count on food like fish or produce can be high enough to damage health without registering on the Geiger counter.

Remember KI works only to block the radioactive iodine. For some reason, it doesn't seem to block the Ce-137 even though it has K in it. The KCL fertilizer is supposed to keep plants we eat from taking up Ce-137 into their tissues. Apparantly the K in KCL is more bioactive for uptake than the K in KI.

And then there are those mushrooms Paul Stamets mentions that suck up Ce-137 into their tissues at the Chernobyl area that should help.

How Mushrooms Can Clean Up Radioactive Contamination - An 8 Step Plan

Paul Stamets | Saturday, 16th April 2011

Paul Stamets, the master of mycorrhiza, describes how to isolate the radioactive material at Fukushima, specifically Cesium 137, and reduce its impact on the surrounding land and its wildlife and people.

Gomphidius glutinosus

Many people have written me and asked more or less the same question: "What would you do to help heal the Japanese landscape around the failing nuclear reactors?"

The enormity and unprecedented nature of this combined natural and human-made disaster will require a massive and completely novel approach to management and remediation. And with this comes a never before seen opportunity for collaboration, research and wisdom.

The nuclear fallout will make continued human habitation in close proximity to the reactors untenable. The earthquake and tsunami created enormous debris fields near the nuclear reactors. Since much of this debris is wood, and many fungi useful in mycoremediation are wood decomposers and build the foundation of forest ecosystems, I have the following suggestions:

1. Evacuate the region around the reactors.

2. Establish a high-level, diversified remediation team including foresters, mycologists, nuclear and radiation experts, government officials, and citizens.

3. Establish a fenced off Nuclear Forest Recovery Zone.

4. Chip the wood debris from the destroyed buildings and trees and spread throughout areas suffering from high levels of radioactive contamination.

5. Mulch the landscape with the chipped wood debris to a minimum depth of 12-24 inches.

6. Plant native deciduous and conifer trees, along with hyper-accumulating mycorrhizal mushrooms, particularly Gomphidius glutinosus, Craterellus tubaeformis, and Laccaria amethystina (all native to pines). G. glutinosus has been reported to absorb – via the mycelium – and concentrate radioactive Cesium 137 more than 10,000-fold over ambient background levels. Many other mycorrhizal mushroom species also hyper-accumulate.

7. Wait until mushrooms form and then harvest them under Radioactive HAZMAT protocols.

8. Continuously remove the mushrooms, which have now concentrated the radioactivity, particularly Cesium 137, to an incinerator. Burning the mushroom will result in radioactive ash. This ash can be further refined and the resulting concentrates vitrified (placed into glass) or stored using other state-of-the-art storage technologies.

By sampling other mushroom-forming fungi for their selective ability to hyper-accumulate radioactivity, we can learn a great deal while helping the ecosystem recover. Not only will some mushroom species hyper-accumulate radioactive compounds, but research has also shown that some mycorrhizal fungi bind and sequester radioactive elements so they remain immobilized for extended periods of time. Surprisingly, we learned from the Chernobyl disaster that many species of melanin-producing fungi have their growth stimulated by radiation.

The knowledge gained through this collaborative process would not only benefit the areas affected by the current crisis, but would also help with preparedness and future remediation responses.

How long would this remediation effort take? I have no clear idea but suggest this may require decades. However, a forested national park could emerge –The Nuclear Forest Recovery Zone – and eventually benefit future generations with its many ecological and cultural attributes.

I do not know of any other practical remedy. I do know that we have an unprecedented opportunity to work together toward solutions that make sense.

For references consult my latest book, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World (Ten Speed Press, Berkeley or www.fungi.com). Click this link to see a video too! Utilizing search engines of the scientific literature will also reveal more corroborative references.

CIIRAD was created in 1986 because the government of France claimed that there was no contamination in France from Chernobyl.

Since then that contamination, the contamination from 20 closed uranium mines tapped out in France and the horrendous uranium mine contamination going on to this date in Australia (and every place else on earth that there are uranium mines) has been discovered by this bold, truthful organization.

Watch this video and learn all you have never been told about the TRUTH about Uranium mining contamination of the environment even before this poison gets to the nuclear power plant.

The tailings at them mines are hundreds of times greater in mass than the yellow cake produced. They are also 80% as radioactive as they were before U-308 was pulled out of them. As usual, the mining companies refuse to remediate the land, as they are allegedly required to do by law, while claiming there is NO contamination or hazard to the environment from the tailings.

John William Gofman is professor emeritus of Medical Physics at UC Berkeley, and lecturer for the Department of Medicine, UCSF. While getting As PhD in physics at Berkeley in the 1940s, Gofman proved the slow and fast neutron fissionability of uranium-233.

At the request of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Gofman helped produce plutonium (not even a quarter-milligram existed at the time) for the Manhattan Project.

He got his MD from UCSF in 1946 (winning the Gold-Headed Cane Award, presented to the senior who most fully personifies a "true physician") and began his research on coronary heart disease.

In 1963 the Atomic Energy Commission asked him to establish a Biomedical Research Division at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to evaluate the health effects of all types of nuclear radiation. By 1969, however, the AEC and the "radiation community" were downplaying his warnings about the risks of radiation . Gofman returned to full-time teaching at Berkeley, switching to emeritus status in 1973.

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When gamma rays or x-rays set electrons in motion, the electrons are traveling at a lower speed than the electrons coming out of Cesium-137. And as a result, when they're traveling at a lower speed, they interact much more with each micrometer of path they travel. Therefore the local harm is much greater. So medical x-rays set in motion electrons that are traveling at a lower speed and hence producing about twice the linear energy transfer, and hence twice the biological effect. That's why alpha particles from radium or plutonium are so much more devastating than beta rays set in motion from x-rays. The alpha particles, with their heavy mass and plus-2 charge, just rip through tissue so strenuously that they don't go very far.

A deception of the crassest sort are the lectures by pro-nuclear people showing a plutonium or radium source and putting up a piece of paper and showing that the alpha-particle radiation on the other side is zero. "You see, a piece of paper will stop those alpha particles, folks, there's no problem with plutonium." Except when that alpha particle is lodged next to an endosteal cell in the bone and producing a horrendous amount of interaction. Or that alpha particle is lodging on the surface of the bronchi — that's why we've got an epidemic of lung cancer among the uranium miners! The fact that they don't travel far is because they interact like hell!

The Economic Failure of Nuclear Power and the Development of a Low-Carbon Electricity Future: Why Small Modular Reactors Are Part of the Problem, Not the Solution Here's why he says SMR nuclear not only isn't part of the renewable energy equation, it actually undermines it:

1.•It won't be cheaper.Like any significant technology leap SMR involves substantially more costs, from using more material per MW of capacity to establishing the infrastructure to design and build the reactors: up to $90 billion by 2020 to fund just two designs and assembly lines, he predicts. That's three-quarters of the total projected investment in all electricity generation — and of course it's far more than renewables' slice of that pie. And the flip side of this coin is subsidies. For 60 years nuclear has been deeply reliant upon vastly more subsidies than renewables have received, and it's still dependent upon them — except in the current scrutinous political climate many of the key ones for nuclear aren't on the table, from liability insurances and waste management to decommissioning, water use, and loan guarantees.

2 •The strategy is bad. The aggressive deployment strategy being proposed for dozens of SMRs near population centers is reminiscent of the 'Great Bandwagon Market' of the 1960s-1980s when utilities ordered hundreds of reactors and ultimately cancelled more than half of them. That was followed by the 'nuclear renaissance' in the 2000s but only 10 percent of those planned reactors are under construction. Now SMR is in the spotlight, five years on and still on the drawing boards, with key developers Westinghouse and Babcock & Wilcox reigning in their SMR efforts (partly blaming low-cost natural gas) as they struggle to find customers and major investors. "It is always possible that nuclear power's fairy godmother will wave her magic wand over the technology and solve its economic, safety, and environmental problems," mused Cooper in an e-mail exchange, "but there is nothing in the 50-year history of commercial nuclear power that suggest this is anything but a fairy tale."

3 •Safety is not first. Despite a raft of safety issues that SMR technologies have to overcome, proponents actually want pre-approvals, limited reviews, and reduced safety margins including staff and evacuation zones. With Fukushima still in the headlines three years later, good luck getting policymakers and regulators to agree to de-emphasize safety — as long as we're all reminded about it.

4 •What's best for the future? The trend toward a more decentralized energy delivery system is the opposite direction from the passive one-way 24/7 baseload delivery model of a nuclear reactor. "Any resource that is not flexible becomes a burden on the system, rather than a benefit to it," said Cooper.

Billing SMR nuclear technology as more flexible and cheaper than larger reactors is an even better argument to support non-nuclear renewable energy options unencumbered by the same security, proliferation, and environmental risks, Cooper points out.

But giving nuclear power a central role in current climate change policy will "not only drain away resources from the more promising alternatives, it would undermine the effort to create the physical and institutional infrastructure needed to support the emerging electricity systems based on renewables, distributed generation and intensive system and demand management."

Agelbert NOTE: The SMR is another poisonous cash cow for Nuke Pukes. Raise HELL if somebody wants to put one of those near you. And when I say NEAR you, I'm not kidding. The hype is to use them in NEIGHBORHOODS to provide "electricity security" and "reliable" RADIATION SICKNESS (whoops, I mean all the conveniences of a "modern" power source). When some NUKE PUKE recommends an SMR PIG, say ---->

Feds Leave Radioactive Waste Stranded In Wildfire Danger ZoneDOE announces it will not meet deadline for removal of radioactive containers held above-ground at northern New Mexico nuclear weapons lab

- Sarah Lazare, staff writer

The Department of Energy admitted Friday it will not meet a deadline to remove dangerous radioactive waste, currently stranded above-ground in unsafe conditions at a New Mexico nuclear weapons laboratory, before wildfire season hits.

At least 3,706 cubic meters of radioactive waste are being stored at the Los Alamos National Laboratory complex after the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, an underground nuclear waste dump in southeastern New Mexico, was shut down indefinitely in February due to an airborne radiation leak.

Officials in New Mexico have warned that the waste at Los Alamos could be within the reach of wildfires and must be transferred elsewhere by the end of June. According to the Associated Press, "The agreement for removal of the waste by June 30 was reached after a massive wildfire lapped at the edge of lab property three years ago, raising concerns about the thousands of barrels of waste that were being stored outside."

"The waste at Los Alamos is trapped with no place to go," Arnie Gundersen, chief engineer and nuclear safety advocate at Fairewinds Associates, told Common Dreams.

The Los Alamos radioactive materials are "transuranic waste" that is described by the DOE as "clothing, tools, rags, debris, soil and other items contaminated with radioactive material generated during decades of nuclear research and weapons development."

Concerns have been raised about the safety of these barrels after it was posited that changes in methods of packaging at Los Alamos, from use of inorganic to organic cat litter to absorb moisture, may be responsible for a chemical reaction with nitrate salts and set off the "heat event" behind the WIPP leak. Officials are still trying to determine the cause of the accident and are investigating the potential danger of the more than 500 nuclear waste containers originating from Los Alamos that were packed with organic cat litter.

The DOE had been sending some Los Alamos radioactive waste to a Texas facility for temporary storage until WIPP is functional. Upon discovering that Los Alamos shipments may be dangerous, the DOE halted all shipments, citing public safety.

But Gundersen warns that these barrels of waste could pose a threat in Texas and Los Alamos, where they are being stored above-ground. "It is worse in the summer, because it is hotter in the summer, and the reactions become less stable," he said.

In a statement (pdf) released Friday, the New Mexico Environment Department said it is "disappointed, but not surprised" that the DOE will not meet its deadline to remove the waste.

Meanwhile, it is still not clear when WIPP will reopen. The facility, which was never supposed to leak, is the bedrock of the U.S. government's current approach to dispose of military-generated plutonium-contaminated transuranic waste from decades of nuclear bomb production and testing.

Critics have warned that WIPP's failure raises serious questions about the overall federal strategy for disposing of nuclear waste.